Welcome to another Serendipitous Frisbee Photo Prompt Wednesday, hosted as always by Marilyn. Today I’m going to talk a bit about the frustratingly wonderful world of being an online shop sucker entrepreneur… and that may seem pretty brash to shamelessly pimp myself in what is essentially another blogger’s challenge… but I promise there will be no annoying commercial links (Subliminal advertising alert: Check my sidebar and header!) and I will not try to sell you anything. That’s what the door-to-door possums are for…

This is the closest thing I have to a ready-made image of a door to door salesman. Hey, who wouldn’t want to turn that Geico Gecko into a messy green stain on your front walk?

Whenever you decide to start up any kind of capitalistic venture on the internet, you will likely get a nice initial bump in sales from family and cyberfriends (should you have any) who feel obligated to buy something from you largely out of a deep sense of pity. Once you are truly out and on your own, you will quickly find out just how little the world at large gives a shit about whatever garbage it is you are trying to foist upon them. Sure, my cookie cutter critter designs look oh so cute to those who pretend to like me and are used to seeing them, but to the uncaring eye, they likely look about as visually attractive as an avocado green icebox.

Don’t laugh. Unlike the crap they make today, those hideous looking appliances are probably still working.

Cafepress will gladly pimp your designs for you outside of the confines of your cybershop in exchange for the shopowner getting pennies on the dollar for any sales they make. This is the CP Marketplace, where unless you are willing to look like both a fool and an annoying asshole on 69 different forms of social media, the overwhelming majority of any sales you make are going to originate from. These were few and far between in the first couple years of The Nest setting up shop on CP, but recently I’ve managed to average about one sale a month. And as it turns out, my most popular item is…

Just in case you forgot what the actual photo part of this prompt post was…

Bumper stickers! I have both the “I Brake For Squirrels” design you see on my car, as well as an “I Brake For Unicorns” spinoff featuring Rainbow Donkey. Both usually end up selling a few copies a year, and I even once had someone visit my blog who saw my web address on one of the stickers someone from Pennsylvania bought! How about those promotional apples? Who says you gotta be a social media ho to direct traffic to your website?

No, only those stupid enough to follow you…

That repeating cash register sound you hear in the background is the 20 or so cents I get added to my imaginary CP treasury after 30 days every time someone buys one of my bumper stickers… and almost double that should someone spring for the bumper MAGNET! I’ve become so good at selling about two dollars worth of bumperwear per year, that I was highly disappointed when I finally branched out to Redbubble this past May and found out they don’t offer a bumper sticker template. WTF, RB? Get with the program! The days of the prairie schooner have long since passed…

My horse doesn’t brake for shit.

But hey, even a hack like me can sell plain old non-bumper type stickers on RB, and wouldn’t you know it, after two months of collecting dust, I’ve now sold a whopping three stickers in my new shop! That’s 80 virtual cents Redbubble will send me in about 30 years when I finally reach $20 in total sales. Not quite enough of a cash cow to put in my two weeks notice at Mecca yet, but I’m getting there!

What do you mean you’ve become a sticker magnate? Get your ass in here and fill these shelves!

Now here’s what actually inspired me to pick this topic for the photo prompt post in the first place. This has been my best month ever for making sales to strangers, with two CP AND two RB sales to my credit. Woohoo, right? Well, here’s what’s truly strange… all four sales, all made independently of each other and I’d assume to all different people, feature the exact same design which I’d created over a year and a half ago, yet had not sold a single damn copy of prior to this August. What are my virtual shoppers going gaga for?

Don’t stop believin’….

The only item with this image on it that existed three weeks ago was the coffee mug Merby requested as her prize for being one of the winners in my Contest of Whatever this past February. Now it will be joined by two Redbubble stickers, a set of greeting cards (The first thing I’ve ever sold in the stationery category!), and a somewhat more expensive T-shirt that even with CP’s tightfisted commission rates will still net me a dollar and change alone! I always loved this design and was a bit disappointed it never got any bites… but it sure seems to be making up for lost time this month… and there’s till a week and a half to go in August!

Yeah, like you needed to be reminded.

OK, I’ve blabbed enough about this… especially for what was supposed to be a photo prompt post. I’ll do it again next week, hopefully with something a little less shameless than my Retro TV ad fare…

Well we LOVE our tee shirts.I will see if I can get our host or hostess to shoot a pictures of both of us and I will send it to you. White isn’t my best color, but for you, ’cause is love you, I will look like Moby Dick in drag 🙂

It’s more of a racket than anything unless you are really talented AND really committed… but hey, a few pennies are more than the nothing I was making on my drawings. Plus, I have to admit it tickles me to no end to think there are shirts/mugs,stickers etc. with my characters on them… all over the world even! Despite my scant sales history, my merch can be found in four different countries! Now to ride off into the sunset…

I thought of that when I went on my mini rant, but I wonder if their stickers would stand up to the abuse of the elements on a car? I didn’t play around all that much over there when I set things up, I might have to see if there’s a feature to jimmy the size of the stickers so they’re big enough for bumper sticker use.

I wish CP had the die cut stickers. Most of my stuff there isn’t even made available for stickers because I’d have to fudge the sizes to get them to fit their template, and I don’t have time for all that.

Do you have the little stick figures in the rear window yet to symbolically show off the Cutter clan? As pretentious as I think they are, I always thought it would be funny for someone to get a whole bunch of the little kid ones… maybe enough to creep around into the side windows. It would make for some funny looks…

Search The Nest!

It’s Contest Of Whatever Time!

Click on the image above to be taken to the official page for the 5th Annual Contest of Whatever! Deadline to enter is March 1st!

Click on Atomic ES to be taken to my online Evil Squirrel's Nest store at CafePress.com.

All original artwork uploaded to this blog featuring Evil Squirrel and any of my related characters was created by myself, and is copyrighted by Evil Squirrel, aka Bill Brown, aka me, the publisher of the Evil Squirrel's Nest blog. It may not be used for any commercial purposes whatsoever, but may be shared on your site with due credit and a link to my blog. Thank you for your consideration!

We’ve Expanded!

Click on my art sale avatar above to be taken to my brand new shop at RedBubble! Yes, now I have two internet stores that nobody will buy anything at...